LIVINGSTON, MONTANA — The American outdoorsman — whether an angler floating through a canyon while fishing for brown trout, or a hunter looking for the rubs, fresh scat and tracks where their game of choice is feeding — is often depicted by legacy media as a disparate collection of people spread all across the country.

Their preference to spend their vacation time in a bear camp, gathered around a campfire or standing in ice-cold rushing streams is perplexing to the media’s more refined tastes.

It doesn’t get the complex rush of adrenaline and observation, or why it is fulfilling to embrace both simultaneously.

Because of that disconnect, the media underestimated what happens when the powerful attempt to take away the cherished freedom to use America’s beloved and expansive public lands. This was exactly what Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee attempted when he proposed the sale of millions of acres of federal lands in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The reaction to Lee’s proposal was deafening if you were paying attention.

The complete wall of opposition was organic, raw and impactful. Lee completely backed down, explained writer and outdoorsman Steven Rinella, whose “MeatEater” platforms have spawned a cultural movement that rarely had anything to do with politics or tribalism, and everything to do with freedom, responsibility, giving back and the great outdoors.

Lee’s proposal would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell 1.225 million acres of public property across the American West. Rinella said that the proposal caused him and millions of outdoorsmen across the country to persuade him to back down.

“There was a sense of satisfaction to winning that fight,” said Rinella. “There was also a tremendous sense of deja vu because we had been through almost the exact same thing in 2017, and there was almost that exact same response,” he said of the widespread public outcry from hunters, anglers, recreationists and public lands enthusiasts across the country.

“We had voices within our organization and felt like, ‘Man, we’re really out there on this and really exposed on this issue.’ But then I started seeing more and more people come on board, people who were supportive of (President Donald Trump’s) agenda but were not going to let this happen,” Rinella said.

And they weren’t the only ones. Outdoor advocacy groups such as Backcountry Hunters & Anglers said their members inspired hundreds of thousands of public land users across the country to call and email their senators and ask that they oppose Lee’s proposal.

The quality of the push was selfless and about individuals coming together to defend their fellow outdoorsmen. Case in point: If Lee’s proposal had come out and had said, “It’ll be this parcel, this parcel, this parcel, this parcel,” and someone had mapped out specifically the 3 million acres, you would’ve then had an element of people looking at that map and saying, “Oh, no, they’re talking about my spot where I camp with my children,” and it would have perhaps taken on a different, more urgent tone.

The way it was proposed made people coalesce around a concept.

Rinella said people wanted to defend the concept of public lands they saw as being under attack.

“This isn’t about a specific housing development. This isn’t about a specific parcel of land somewhere. This is about, ‘Is this sacred or is this not sacred?’ And people keep saying, ‘No, the concept is sacred.’ We will not tolerate someone questioning the validity of public lands,” Rinella said.

The concept was hard to get for people who don’t have the tradition of hunting, camping, fishing and hiking.

Our public lands, especially these federally managed public lands, are open to hunters and anglers from around the country and the world. The states set the rules and sell the licenses, but aspirationally, any person in this country can desire to hunt in any of these places.

It is an aura of infinite possibility, and when we lose these lands or there’s a risk of losing them, we watch our infinite possibilities become finite.

Rinella said this stirred the outcry.

“These public lands are the places where we raise our families and take our kids. We have a youth deer hunting season here in Montana that I have been bringing my kids to on (a) federally managed public land spot. When they turn 10, we go there; it’s just baked into our family legacy. It’s a place they know and love. And so to imagine losing it … it feels like kind of like your home burnt down,” he said.

Losing that access and tradition would be an emotional, cultural loss, and it’s a loss of legacy and tradition as well. Hunting and angling are tied to the land by definition. You form a bond with the landscape.

“You’re relying on the ground in its closest version to as it was made. You are looking at places that seem to be that they were laid down by God there, and you have access to it. You don’t own it, but you have access to it. Then the next generation has access to it,” Rinella explained.

Movements in our cultural and political landscape often appear as bright, shiny objects that the press pays attention to only if they are outrageous, then moves on to the next. Few are long-lasting, fewer cross all political leanings, and even fewer make a difference.

This movement that Rinella and all the other individualists out there who are rooted in the importance of their relationship with nature, contributing actively to the outdoors, and all the traditions that stretch between grandfather and grandchild to continue them, rose up and met the moment and brought about real change.

“We have a very special system that allows our citizens to have places to go out on the landscape where they’re not getting messed with, where they have a very generous array of possibilities laid out in front of them, and you can just kind of do your thing and experience American freedom,” said Rinella.

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